BVI Premier Dr The Hon D. Orlando Smith, OBE, on Sunday wrote a letter to UK newspaper The Mirror in response to an article published on the same day titled 'Thatcher, the Tax Snatcher’.

In his letter, published in the Daily Mirror on Monday, Dr Smith says that the article makes the "classic error of assuming that the use of an offshore structure is in some way improper for UK tax purposes or that some unauthorised benefit is obtained."

But this is not true, he says. Tax information in the BVI is transparent, which should suggest to journalists that offshore structuring in the Overseas Territories is lawful.

"Well advised international investors naturally gravitate towards the stability and security that the English Common law system of The British Virgin Islands offers for both trust and corporate structures," he adds.

The Virgin Islands, commonly known as the British Virgin Islands (or BVI), is a British Overseas Territory located in the Caribbean to the east of Puerto Rico. The Cayman Islands are also a British Overseas Territory, located in the western Caribbean Sea.